


Lessons for Cousins

by silveradept



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Theseus and the Minotaur (Parallel Lives - Plutarch)
Genre: Boastful Theseus, Clever Ariadne, Gen, Plans, Theseus is not a catch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24092317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Ariadne has a few maidens, a little time, and a lot to teach them about their upcoming fate. In years before, this was only to comfort them, but this year, perhaps, with the help of someone with more courage than brains, she can get her maidens out before the creature at the center of the Labyrinth gets them.
Relationships: Ariadne & The Seven Sacrificial Maidens
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: Once Upon a Fic 2020





	Lessons for Cousins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



Ariadne shook her head. Seven maidens stood before her, as they had each of the previous years, destined for the labyrinth that would claim their lives. She understood why the men were demanded as a sacrifice to the labyrinth, but it seemed a senseless waste of life to also demand girls on the cusp of a full life.

"Cousins," she said to the seven assembled before her, for at this point, they were her family, even if only some of them were of her blood, "in two days' time you will be sent forth into the labyrinth as a sacrifice to its inhabitant, a tribute gained through victory."

"Once you are entombed in that place, nobody will hear you cry for aid, nobody will stop what has been put in motion, nobody will come for you to take your bones and offer sacrifices in your memory. Today, here, you are dead, and because it pleases my father to require my participation in this ritual, I am Kharon, charged with ferrying you to the final place where your souls will rest."

The maidens looked between themselves, differing degrees of fear showing in their faces.

"Until such time as you are placed in the labyrinth, you are mine to do with as I wish," Ariadne continued. Dropping her voice to a more conversational volume, she smiled. "And as such, I will do my best to make sure you can survive."

Ariadne took the young ones to the baths to wash the salt of the sea off them and then to clothe them as appropriate for those to be sacrificed to the labyrinth. Their hair was styled, jewels placed, and food brought to help put them at ease and give them respite from the fate that was to befall them. For many of them, this was the most kindness they had been treated with since they were chosen.

"Cousins," she told them, when they had finished, "they who will take you to the labyrinth expect you to be afraid, to wail, to cling to each other, and then to die. The creature whose domain that is will not be waiting for you. He will not rush to the entrance to see what he has been brought. He has no need to hurry, when he believes that you will be there waiting for him when it is time for him to collect what he has been offered. You must make him work to get what he wishes, like you would any other man." Ariadne noted their looks to see for whom maiden had meant unwed and for those whom it meant unversed. "I have given you gold and jewels and fine clothes, cousins, because you deserve finery for what time you have left," Ariadne continued.

"And because we're not supposed to disappear in the night before our time," Amara, kinswoman through her mother, countered, grinning.

Ariadne only shrugged. "If you wish to disappear, cousins, you will have to learn how to do it in a room full of people specifically looking at you." A minute later, a knock on the door summoned them to dinner, and no further conversation was sought.

During the dinner, Ariadne caught several of her charges stealing glances at one of the seven young men also slated for the sacrifice.

"Who is this one that makes all these girls consider their fate so lightly?" she asked.

"Theseus," Melissa, kinswoman through her aunt, told her. "Son of the one who sent us as tribute. He volunteered for this duty."

"Quite certain of the length and heft of his sword, then," Ariadne said dryly. All the same, she thought to herself, it is the ones who are so sure of their incipient heroism who can do the most good in the hands of someone competent. "I should like to meet him tomorrow," Ariadne said aloud, so that others would hear and remember this. "I think it would be best to see him at his strongest, perhaps during the warrior training tomorrow, so that I can determine for myself whether he is the hero desperately desired or no."

"Do you intend to give him comfort in his last days?" Lord Nikolaos jeered at her. "Had we but known your virtue would go to a hopeless cause, we would have arranged our sons accordingly."

"And they would have still left, tails tucked and ears cowed, unable to take the slightest thought that their prey might not be composing odes in their honor," Ariadne replied sweetly. Lord Nikolaos, much like his sons, scowled, but retreated, and the rest of the night passed in conversation about nothing of importance.

The next day, as she had declared, Ariadne and the seven maidens went to see the youths strive with each other on the training grounds. While Theseus certainly turned some heads, Ariadne had no further need to watch him after only a few bouts of wrestling.

"Come, cousins," she said to the assembled maidens, "we have work to do." While the attention of her father's guards were focused on the youths, including, she noted, the passing of some wagers' results between them, Ariadne stole them into the place where swords for training were kept, where the instructor of weapons waited for all of them.

"The creature at the heart of the Labyrinth expects foolish girls who will scream and will not resist him," Ariadne said, addressing all of them. "It is best that you learn how to avoid him, if he smells you, hears you, sees you, he will pursue you until he has you. If you intend to live long enough to disappear, however, you will have to make him work for you."

"Like we would any other man," Amara said, recalling Ariadne's words from the previous day. Several of the maidens laughed nervously, the others more heartily.

The master of weapons went to Amara and stood before her. "And how would you make a man work for you, then?" he said, offering her a hand to take. Sensing deceit, Amara aimed to strike him in a soft and tender place, but he anticipated her, and in a few moments more, had her pinned beneath him.

"Good instincts," he said, rising off her. "Bad strategy. A man with all his faculties can react, plan, strategize." He held out his hand to another maiden, who shrank away from him. "Enrage him first by denying him what he wants, and he will no longer think, and then you can manipulate him." The master of weapons strode between them to return to his duties regarding the youths.

Ariadne would admit to being surprised that Melissa was the one who provoked what happened next, putting the weapon master's lesson into action by indelicately and forcefully standing upon Penelope's foot. Penelope, cousin through a marriage, her foot held fast underneath Melissa's, attempted to get Melissa to move, first by words, then by attempting to displace her. Melissa returned the attempt with greater force than she had received, at which point, the craftier and wiser maidens began to provoke those around them into joining the conflict on one side or another, while attempting to stay away from it for as long as they could manage. Eventually, none could hold out against the battle that raged, save Ariadne, who watched with sympathy as each of the seven learned who they could goad, who they could fight, and who they would ultimately have to submit to should a situation call for the crafts of both boxer and wrestler combined.

"Cousins, it is unseemly to battle each other," Araidne said, calling for an end when their passions had been exhausted. "There are surely better targets to practice this art upon, and to marry it to the diplomatic ones so that you can control the mood of any man around you."

Melissa and Amara both smiled wolfishly at each other, and Ariadne hid her own amusement thinking about what dinner tonight would entail, as each of the seven would attempt further practice of their arts. She had some manipulation of her own yet to do, so she sent all seven to the baths to clean themselves and become proper again, while she herself went back to the fields where the young men continued to strive against each other.

Theseus was not hard to find in the crowd. Ariadne admitted to herself that someone with his physique might be worth some indiscretion, but the efficient wrestling she saw in him as she approached changed to something more concerned with looks than effectiveness. Theseus still pinned his opponent, but it was clear that he wished to impress her with his prowess. He thought her simple, and so she would be simple, smiling and giving him coy looks and whispering with the other maidens and playing the part of the lord's daughter who had tragically fallen in love with the one thing she cannot have. It would certainly amuse her father to see such a play in his own place, fancying himself the chorus that knew the will of the gods and the Fates.

"Such a disappointment that all of these strong men will be fed to the Labyrinth," she said in Theseus's hearing. "It seems to be a waste of life, done without proper sacrifice or honor of those who are condemned."

"You have so little faith in us," Theseus boasted. "I have fought many strong men, and defeated them all, whether they meant to relieve me of my money, my life, or in this circle, my pride."

"You do not face merely a man in the Labyrinth, but the horrors of your own mind brought forth and given life by those Muses that see it fit to inspire you to madness," Ariadne countered. "If you hope to succeed solely by your own strength, then compose your ode to Hades, carry your obols with you, and hope that Persephone grants you mercy." Ariadne swept off, hoping Theseus had understood her meaning, and went to rejoin the maidens before they went to dinner.

"Cousins," she said, smiling grimly, "the creature of the Labyrinth will not be swayed by sweet words once you are inside. Compared to the horrors of being wife and mother, death may seem preferable, but if you would strive to be on another path than the one my father sets for you, then perhaps one of the lords, or one of the sons, could be persuaded to deliver you from the Labyrinth." The looks of the seven told her what each of them thought their chances of persuasion might be, and the vigor that they would apply to trying to find a way out. The lords would find it flattering, and perhaps one of them might take pity on one of the maidens after all. That none had so far did not mean they never would, only that it would have to be the right woman for them to risk Minos's wrath and the prospect of being left in the Labyrinth themselves.

Ariadne made sure to sit herself as close to Theseus as she could be, to listen to his boasts of arms and the way in which he had defeated several highwaymen, each by their own method of executing their victims after robbing them. Ariadne was fascinated in the way the other listeners hung on his words, never questioning whether such villains would exist, much less be so consistent in their strange methods to become legendary. She kept an appropriate veneer of rapt attention herself, so as to convince those around her that she as equally as enchanted by the tale, but the most she was willing to concede was that in some other life, perhaps, Theseus would have made an acceptable bard. As a lord's son, being able to convince the local lords of his sincerity would be helpful in keeping them from supporting another son to lead them. The way that he continued to describe his own actions and the surety at which he took them confirmed for Ariadne that Theseus would respond to a story, especially if there were an opportunity for him to become the hero. What to tell him, unfortunately, was still beyond her, but she could determine that later.

The day of the maidens' imprisonment dawned, and with it, inspiration from an unlikely source. On her way to fetch the maidens, Ariadne stumbled through the web of one of Arachne's sisters, and remembered the story of one who wove a great tapestry to show how men perceived their gods, to shame them into behaving better.

"Cousins," she said, addressing the maidens, "today, you face your deaths. But despair not. If you remember what you have been taught, you will be a difficult creature for the Labyrinth to consume. Minos will send the youths in to the creature of the Labyrinth after he believes all of you dead, on the second day after you are sealed in. I will bid one of the youths leave a thread behind him as he goes to meet his fate, in belief that he will need it to return again after he has finished the task of slaying the monster. Find his progress, let it lead you to the place where you entered, and I will be waiting for you. Be strong, cousins, and it will keep you alive."

To each of them, she gave a kiss one gives to family, and a promise that she would be waiting for them on the night when the thread would appear. Then, as her duty demanded of her, she saw them to the entrance of the Labyrinth, and sealed them all inside. While her heart ached for those who would have to brave the terror of the Labyrinth inside, Araidne made haste to the spinning room and selected a skein that glinted in the firelight. She planned to inquire of Theseus's whereabouts, but before she left the spinning room, he entered it.

"I asked around to see where you might be," he said, "and your maids said you were here. I was hoping we could talk," he said, giving her a smile that was meant to impress her.

"About what?" she said,

"I would not go to the Labyrinth without your favor, if I could have it," he said. "You seemed distressed that someone such as I could be sent. However, despair not, for I have a plan to take with me something to even the score."

"And how do you plan to take such a thing in with you?" Ariadne said. "You will be searched for weapons and tools before you are sent in."

"I do not intend to go in with the others," he said. "Since you are responsible for the maidens, I assume that you can also seal me inside before the others, and with what I will need to succeed at stopping this travesty once and for all."

"The inhabitant of the Labyrinth is strong. The maze is designed to confuse you and then he will kill you."

Theseus laughed. "I have been told many times to be afraid of what might kill me. All of those bandits I told you about last night had killed many, but I was swifter, stronger, and better than all of them and their experience. A creature that expects only easy prey will not think of me as too dangerous, until it is already too late for him."

"Very well," she said, "I will seal you in tonight. Speak to no one of this."

The rest you know, but for this: Of the seven maidens who went in, five followed the thread that Theseus left and came out into the starry night above them. Two had been unlucky and found the creature before Theseus slew it. Those five stole away under the night and lived lives that warrant their own stories. Ariadne would have gone with them, but that she desired to take the evidence of her involvement away, so that Theseus could tell his story unencumbered and Minos, her father, would not suspect the hand of his daughter in the destruction of his Labyrinth. However, the Fates had woven their web around her as surely as she had seen one of Arachne's cousins weave hers, and to her dismay, her role in Theseus's story had not yet finished. 

For this slight, Ariadne spoke many ill words of any god or goddess that presided over the matters between men and women for all the years that she was bound to Theseus, before, at long last, she could be separated from him and live what remained of her life in the company of those cousins whom she freed from the grip of the Labyrinth.


End file.
